Noncompliant

A first-hand account of the oversight of the big banks in the wake of the financial crisis, from the Federal Reserve examiner who refused to be silenced

In 2011, Carmen Segarra took a job as at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York supervising for Goldman Sachs. It was an opportunity, she believed, to monitor the big bank’s behavior in order to avoid another financial crisis.

Segarra was shocked to discover, however, the full extent of the relationship between Goldman and the Fed. She began making secret recordings that later became the basis of a This American Life episode that exposed the Fed’s ineffectiveness in holding banks accountable.

In Noncompliant, Segarra chronicles her experience blowing open the doors on the relationship between the big banks and the government bodies set up to regulate them.

As we mark the tenth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, Noncompliant shows us how little has changed, and offers an urgent call for real reforms.

Praise

"In Noncompliant, gutsy whistleblower Carmen Segarra detonates a metaphorical explosive device inside the previously impenetrable limestone facade of the powerful Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In a gripping and highly personal narrative, Segarra reveals the depths of the shameful regulatory capture that exists between the New York Fed and the Wall Street banks it is meant to supervise -- and the high price she paid for doing the right thing."—William D. Cohan, author of Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

What's Inside

In the News

An unprecedented look inside one of the most powerful, secretive institutions in the country. The NY Federal Reserve is supposed to monitor big banks. But when Carmen Segarra was hired, what she witnessed inside the Fed was so alarming that she got a tiny recorder and started secretly taping.

Former bank examiner Carmen Segarra vaulted into public consciousness earlier this month when she filed a wrongful termination lawsuit alleging that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York fired her after she refused to go soft on investment banking behemoth Goldman Sachs.

The key thing that Segarra disclosed was that Mike Silva, her NY Fed boss, claimed that Lehman’s failure caused a “Road to Damascus” conversion that transformed him from a regulatory weakling into the big banks’ worst nightmare – a tough bank supervisor. I showed that, in reality, he did nothing when he learned of Goldman’s scam.